Ep 9: As the New Year approaches, many of us are contemplating what intentions we're holding and what we're ready to release from the year past. Personally, I am a BIG fan of reflection and visioning, and would love to share with you about the process I like to use - and some key principles of why it works. 

In this episode, I share why most New Year's Resolutions don't work - and what we can do instead to ensure we manifest our desires and start moving towards our biggest visions and new versions of ourselves in an actionable and sustainable way. 

In this episode, we'll explore:

• Why most New Years resolutions don't work - (hint: most people don't understand what creates real change!) 
• Why real and lasting shift must be embodied (not just in your mind) 
• How to get your body and nervous system on board with your intentions
• Setting intentions at the level of IDENTITY, not behavior
• Reflection on the past year as a process of metabolizing your experiences
• A few potent practices I love to use as part of my reflection & integration
• How we create from the level of our subconscious mind (and why it's so important to take this perspective when setting intentions) 
• Key questions to ask as you process the year past and clear space for the new
• How to start excavating the belief systems holding you back from your biggest visions and dreams
• How to decide who you are becoming in the New Year
• Key questions to ask to determine your new operating system and way of being
• 3 areas to focus on when setting goals and visions for 2026

As part of this community, I'd love to share with you the Embodied Refleciton & Visioning workbook I've created for 2026:

Envision & Align 2026 - A Reflection & Visioning Workbook (PDF)

Wishing you a blessed New Year, and all that is to come!! 

Ep 8: Today, I'm sharing with you a bit of a personal story about a month I recently spent living on a rescue ranch in Baja Sur, Mexico immersing with horses, donkeys, the magical Baja desert, and more lessons than I expected to receive.

I went down with no real plan, said yes to the unknown, and found myself slowed way down… tending animals, stewarding land, and remembering parts of myself I didn’t realize had been waiting to come back online.

This is a reflection on horse medicine, donkey wisdom, nervous system regulation, leadership, presence, and the kind of healing that happens out on the land, in stillness, rhythm and relationship - rather than in a therapy room. (also: I personally find most healing and transformation to happen out in life and the world!) 

In this episode, I share:

• How periods of transition and uncertainty can become powerful portals for growth
• The role of land, rhythm, and simplicity in nervous system regulation
• My journey spending a month on a ranch, disconnected from the "default world" and returning to a deeper remembrance within
• What horses teach us about leadership, presence, and our own energy states
• Perspectives on purpose and stewardship in our lives
• What working with horses taught me about pressure and release (and where we apply too much pressure in our own lives)
• How working with horses mirrors our patterns in relationships and decision-making
• Horses as a powerful model for trust, attunement, and relational consent
• The gentle, grounding wisdom of donkeys (and why they might be some of the most underrated healers!!)
• How returning to ranch life became a form of my own inner child and soul retrieval
• Why healing doesn’t have to be heavy - it can be joyful, playful, and alive!
• The importance of community, creativity, and finding environments that support who we’re becoming

I share this episode from my heart as part story/reflection, and part love letter to the land, the animals here and their medicine, and the ways life is always available to reshape us when we listen to the inner call forth to the unknown. I hope you find resonance and that this sparks a curiosity or 

Ep 7: I am recording this episode as a soul-stream from the desert of Baja, reflecting on the endings, completions, and releases that I've been experiencing this year and that so many of us are moving through right now. As we step into the stillness of winter and prepare to close out 2025, we'll explore what it is to be in the tender liminal space as old identities and ways of being are shed away, how to navigate the process of release, and six tools to move through times of completion with grace, creating potent space for the next chapter to arise. If you’ve been feeling the old falling away in your life this year, you are definitely not alone - trust that it is paving the way for a personal and collective new beginning! 

In this episode we explore:

• The collective theme of release and completion as we close out 2025
• Why so many of us are shedding old identities, roles, and masks right now
• How the Year of the Snake relates to shedding skin and returning to the earth
• My personal season of endings, loss, and integration this year
• How trying to “build” in a year meant for integration creates struggle and burnout
• Moving from our default linear, productivity culture back into nature’s cyclical wisdom
• Winter as a powerful portal for stillness, rest, and energetic rest
• Six practices for moving through release and completion with more grace
• Letting go by just “5%” and taking one stone out of your metaphorical backpack
• Inviting more silence, stillness, and polarity between movement and rest
• Emotional processing tools like breathwork, shaking, sound, and somatic practices
• Finding a healthy balance between solitude and chosen community that supports your becoming
• Using writing, creativity, and non-verbal expression as soul work in the liminal space
• The power of ritual, ceremony, and nature as teachers of death, composting, and rebirth
• Rewilding as a return to innate nature, instinct, and authenticity beneath the programming
• A look ahead at the shift from a “9 year” of endings to a “1 year” and the Fire Horse energy of new beginnings

Ep 6: Today, I am joined by my dear friend and sister Kaleigh Smith for a rich conversation on creative liberation, retreats (...journeys!), and the healing power of our authentic expression - especially as women on a journey to reclaim our sovereignty and embodied power.  

Kaleigh is an expressive arts therapist in training, and together we will be co-hosting the Vibrant Heârt Creative Liberation & Expressive Arts Retreat for women this coming November 2-8 in beautiful Costa Rica. 

Together we explore:

• Expression as a soulful, embodied practice, not just an artistic one
• The universal human impulse to create - and how expression is actually our medicine
• Using expression to give voice to our inner parts - from trauma to leadership
• The necessity of slowness and softness in nurturing feminine creative energy
• The contrast between cerebral living and somatic, soul-led creation
• Different modalities of expression - cognitive, kinesthetic, sensory, symbolic - and how each can unlock deeper self-awareness.
• Kaleigh's journey of finding Expressive Arts Therapy as a soulful modality for her service in the world 
• Kristen’s journey of “rewilding” through plant medicine, psychedelics, and life in Peru
• Creativity beyond art: in relationships, rituals, home, and daily choices
• The role of environment, nature, and cultural influence on creativity and embodiment
• How overstimulation and digital overwhelm in our modern age hinder authentic expression - and what we can do about it

 
🌴🎨🌊 Costa Rica Creative Women's Retreat - Nov 2-8, 2025 (Apply below!)

Vibrant Heart - Creative Liberation Retreat for Women

Costa Rica Retreat Application

Learn more about my work and offerings here:

www.wildsoulmedicine.com

Ep. 5: Today we'll be exploring one of my favorite topics and one that has many facets (of which we will cover a few): our Purpose and Dharma. 

A few themes we explore in this episode:

• Why is purpose discovery and inquiry so important? 
• What is meant by "Dharma" in the yogic tradition
• The 3 components of Dharma, and how we can start to uncover our own
• Why it's important to understand our true nature
• Prompts and questions to start unraveling your personal dharma
• Why finding our purpose often involves letting go the idea of purpose
• Hidden places your purpose/dharma may be hiding
• The Ikigai framework for discovering our reason for being
• Tim Kelley's True Purpose model

Resources from this Episode:

Purpose Discovery Reflections (PDF)

True Purpose - Tim Kelley

 
🌴🎨🌊 Costa Rica Creative Women's Retreat - Nov 2-8, 2025

www.wildsoulmedicine.com/costa-rica-retreat

Learn more about my work and offerings here:

www.wildsoulmedicine.com

Connect with me on Facebook, Youtube, and Instagram.

If you'd like to get in touch with me directly, you can send me an email at
[email protected]

Ep. 4: Today, I'm returning from the podcast void (!!) with a personal update from Peru, along with some of the top lessons life has been delivering here - and some of my greatest teachers in my five years living in the Sacred Valley. 

I am so grateful for those of you along with me here on this podcasting journey, and am excited for the new evolutions in the vision and mission of The Wild Within. I'll be publishing weekly episodes and would love to have you along for the explorations! 

A few themes we explore in this episode:

• Highlights from my personal journey over the past year
• Learning to embrace grief and paradox
• Working with sacred plant medicines in a mindful and balanced way
• Life and relationships as a mirror for our shadows and unmet parts
• The power of community
• My greatest teachers here in Peru
• ..... and more stream-of-consciousness thoughts from yours truly :) 

Learn more about my work and offerings here:

www.wildsoulmedicine.com
 
Costa Rica Retreat - Nov 2-8, 2025

www.wildsoulmedicine.com/costa-rica-retreat


Connect with me on Facebook, Youtube, and Instagram.

If you'd like to get in touch with me directly, you can send me an email at
[email protected]

Ep. 2: In this episode, I share a rich conversation with Maitreya Wolf, a soul evolution mentor, tarot reader, and musician whose life and work are devoted to the spiritual power of Beauty, living the path of soul, and the wild earth.

 We explore: 

• The qualities and stages of a soul initiation process
• Recognizing the link between our personal and collective evolution; becoming coherent and generative beings not only for ourselves, but for the greater field of consciousness
• Accessing our unique purpose during these times
• The intertwined journey of personal and collective evolution
• Living at the choice point in our lives, learning how to orient within the arc of our trajectory and soul’s compass
• Working with our core wounds and challenges in a generative, life-giving way as part of our evolutionary process
• The relationship between trauma and initiation, and reframing trauma as a deepening into our soul path
• Learning to recognize and clear the distortions to our own inner beauty
• Returning to the remembrance of our innate connection to all of life
• Widening ourselves and our perspectives to the fullness of existence, so we can make truly conscious choices in our lives
• Becoming coherent for life to pour through us in full awareness
• Re-establishing our innate connection to nature and the wild
• How being in relationship with nature is linked with our personal empowerment
• Becoming in tune with the rhythms and cycles of nature and sourcing our power therein
• Awakening from “stranded amnesia" to reclaim our sovereignty and remember who we truly are
• Remembering the symbiosis of all things and how this applies to our lives
• Choosing to “stay and be with what is” rather than run away, as a generative act
• The questions to ask ourselves to be in true service to our world today and discover what we are here to give.
• How to connect to your “Exalted Self”
• Accessing your creative power and becoming the creative force of life
• Changing our relationship to life (at a personal and collective level)
• Returning to a state of wonder and reverence for life, and to the magnificence of our being
• Transmuting and integrating all parts of ourselves so we may become more whole

Resources from this episode:

You can get in touch with Maitreya at her website:

soulpowermentoring.com

You can book a free soul power activation call with her here, 

Connect with her on Facebook, Youtube, and Instagram.



Get in Touch:

If you'd like to get in touch with me directly, you can send me an email at
[email protected]

Find me on IG: @soulrise.medicine

Or contact me through my website at
www.soulrisemedicine.com

Shadow Integration is a vital tool for integrating all aspects of ourselves in order to live with more vitality, wholeness, and self-awareness. 

In this solo show, we will explore:

• What shadow work is, and how our shadow forms in childhood
• What happens when we ignore our shadow (or in Jungian terminology, repress our 'personal unconscious') 
• The holographic nature of the universe, and how we can grow self-aware through seeing parts of ourselves projected out onto others
• Healing the illusion of separation
• Working with our natural desires to uncover our true path in life
• Uncovering and owning our shadow parts 
• The "light shadow" and whole-self integration
• Tools for emotional awareness and transmuting shadow parts into our personal power

Resources from this episode:

The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious by Carl Jung

The Dark Side of the Light Chasers by Debbie Ford

Owning Your Own Shadow by Robert A. Johnson

Shadow Work Toolkit


Get in Touch:

If you'd like to get in touch with me directly, you can send me an email at
[email protected]

Find me on IG: @soulrise.medicine

Or contact me through my website at
www.soulrisemedicine.com

Welcome back to the podcast! It's been a 3-year evolutionary hiatus for The Wild Within, but it feels amazing to be back, ready to explore what is emerging at this point in time, sharing tools for elevating our consciousness and diving deeply into our medicine within. This season, you can expect solo shows and inspiring conversations with others in the consciousness movement, to help your journey to awakened and empowered living in these times. 

All my love!
Kristen